It's All Relative
by Xintiandi
Summary: The sun sets, the moon rises, the world spins, I walk. I didn't know it, but time is relative, and somehow, someway, I walked through the end of time to where it all began. Unabashed Time Travel.
1. Prologue

**Disclaimer: **Naruto is the property of Kishimoto Masashi.

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**It's All Relative**

**Prologue**

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**The sun sets, the moon rises, the world spins, I walk. Gods above, or below; wherever they are—I doubt their realm of existence would be so prosaic as just to be looking down upon us—I walk, everywhere. I've walked so long I forgot more things than people can imagine knowing. It gets tedious sometimes, my travels before more akin to if-I-don't-run-the-world-is-going-to-end-(basically). A megalomaniac with a serious god delusion, who seems to have to have the skills to back it up, tends to make you run away really fast.

Long story short, Pein ended things, like Konoha even after they unwillingly gave up my presence at Myobokuzan, or Madara (only us jinchuuriki are truly immortal) when he tried to rein in 'his' tool. Naturally, Tsunade was too stubborn to die on anyone's terms but her own, forcing her way into our part of the astral plane from Katsuyu's, giving me one last command, "run, Naruto, run." Now, running wasn't really my style, but it was a great plan. Pein couldn't exactly bend the world to his will if he didn't have the Kyuubi. Many, many years later I found out that the Kyuubi, and its master, could actually subjugate the chakra of the other eight bijuu. So I guess Pein was left with a gigantic summoning statue with an ass-load of chakra and no way to leverage it (because I was running).

Somewhere along the way while I was running from Akatsuki, and sometimes Hebi, a couple Kages got together and rained holy hell down on Ame, wiping out the entire country. And somewhere along the way, soon after I found out that Akatsuki was finished, Konoha had become a husk, no one who remembered me left, or alive for that matter. I forget how long I was on the lam, small details like dates are super fuzzy now, but I was just hoping even after a couple, well maybe several decades someone might still be around. So then I downgraded from running for my life to wandering around for the rest of my life—what a joke that turned out to be. What else was I supposed to do?

The sun rose, the moon set, the world spun, I fucked. I spent a good amount of time fucking my way across the world but after a couple hundred years even that got old. So I went to just walking. Towards the _end_, I think I could justify calling it that, I didn't even remember half the things I saw, just vague feelings I might have hiked through this mountain pass, might have swum in this lake, might have fondled a pair of similarly shaped breasts.

Really, the only thing I always remember was my time in Konoha and when I was on the road with Jiraiya. I guess that might explain what's happening to me, but I never really did like those bullshit metaphysics and self-realization books. Hold those thoughts, back to walking. So I was walking—common theme for a couple thousand years—_lucky_ enough to be living Orochimaru's dreams, walking and walking away my immortal life until it seems Kyuubi and I walked through the end of time.

Rather, I walked and the fox was there because it had no choice. I sorta remember it getting really hot, then cold, then black for a long long time, during which I think I just sat around with Kyuubi and some of her (Kyuubi is a kitsune after all) demon friends. It might have just been in my mind, but damn, they tell some funny stories. Then at one point, sometime during all the story telling, Kyuubi and I look at each other and screamed till our throats are raw.

I'm pretty sure we both felt the same thing, a sense of foreboding imminence, before we were literally eviscerated, reconstituted, and then quite suddenly left alone, just the two of us floating along to wherever we were supposed to end up.

And that's the rub. We were floating for a long time—surprise. Kyuubi had taken to composing rather violent collections of rondeaus, love children of her weird obsession with the number thirteen and dispensing doom and destruction. I alternated between laughing at her and entertaining myself with various bodily noises—always fascinating; then we were bright and blazing before being torn apart again, and with growing horror, watching ourselves become imprisoned. It may have been a little easier for Kyuubi to see it for the second time, but one tends to be stunned thinking about their origins (kids hate inadvertantly visualizing their parents fucking), so I was quiet and watched the Yondaime seal a rampaging demon into a squalling child.

Don't ask me how this all happened. How do you watch yourself in the past? How do you go back in fucking time? If we really did go back in time, and this wasn't just some hallucination, why wasn't Kyuubi, well Kyuubi and doing the entire attack!destroy! and why wasn't I being born or sucking my first tit or getting inked with my death-mark? Like I said, metaphysics aren't really my strong point. The last twelve years I just chalked it up to some reincarnation bullshit and lazed around in Kyuubi's cage. Not much else to do besides chill and talk shit to Kyuubi about her getting sealed _again_ and being stuck with two Naruto's this time around—if this wasn't just some huge dream.

But it wasn't a huge dream, far from it. Jiraiya would have loved to use my situation as some sort of literary device illustrating god knows what—writing was his thing after all. Nutshell!; the moment our host Naruto realized that he was the Kyuubi's vessel, I realized I was alive again and something immense and terrifying crystallized in our minds, and then we were one; which is where it all began, again.

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**Author's Note**: I was trying to work on **Searing Tattoo** when this popped right out of my mind onto paper. Just a one-shot thingy, needed to get it out of my brain. Don't hold your breath for more. The only real good time-travel fic was **Second Chance** and that's probably never going to be updated again.


	2. Ch1 : Dakota Suite

**Disclaimer: **Naruto is the property of Kishimoto Masashi.

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**Chapter 1**

**Dakota Suite**

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After spending hundreds of years on the road, I thought I was used to becoming bored. Maybe it's just how Konoha has always been; happy and hopeful—unlike other Hidden Villages—but decidedly mellow, especially in peacetime. Or maybe I'm just refusing to acknowledge that even _I've_ become a bit jaded. Honestly, I think it's much easier to blame the D-ranks and the tedium of genin training, though I've thought about this type of situation before.

If there's one thing Ero-sennin taught me, it was the value of books, especially good literature; it has a certain resonance in real life, and yes, even magic realism too. For a couple years after one of Mist's many civil wars, a lot of bookstores stocked a glut of bullshit time-travel-cum-groundhog day fiction. Jiraiya had me read a few and write a few essays, yes, _essays_, on recurrent themes and motifs in the entire genre.

After spending a couple weeks sorting through the filth, I summed it up like this: The characters and settings might change, hell even the plot might seem different, but god damn, it's all the same. Every single time the protagonist goes back in time and is able to atone for past mistakes, prevent unfortunate happenings—basically gain redemption and end up with the girl, of course.

Usually when I did literary critique for him, he would take apart my arguments and we'd have a _long_ discussion about what exactly I was taking from the story, and during the first couple months on the road, why my analysis was flawed. For this essay though, he just clapped me on my shoulder and walked out of our hotel room. Naturally, I got really angry and stomped down to the red-light district of the town we were staying in that night.

In a break from the usual routine I couldn't find Jiraiya doing the usual trawl of the brothels for flesh, nor was he at a swank hostess bar. I spend half the night looking for him because I wanted my just due, or rather my just criticism—his training made me into a glutton for punishment. When I did find him, he wasn't even trashed, just buzzing at a small yatai under a bridge. I took a stool next to him and attacked my otsumami, judiciously working my way through some warm sake, but leaving the onus on him to start the conversation.

Most people would think my meager social skills would deteriorate more with ero-ero. It was just the opposite. Interacting with real people—not ninjas— tends to help in that area. So I let him slowly drink, and drink, and drink some more. I was pretty pissed, since he was doing it on my dime, as usual, but I had learned when to antagonize him and when to let him be.

We were the only two left at the cart when he turned to me and nodded, saying, "You're exactly right. All those stories, though they're just shitty fiction, most people really want to live that dream, ya know. Go back in time, get the chance to undo past mistakes, make the perfect life, be the perfect person; become someone they're _not_, but in their mind someone they _could_ have become. What they don't realize that this is reality, there's no genie going to give them a wish, no devil going to exchange a favor for a soul, no jutsu to make their dreams come true. What they have to realize is that life will never be like a book, it's never going to go exactly the way you wish it could. Mistakes are mistakes; it's about being mentally strong enough to move on, not make the same mistakes, and stop living in sappy shonen manga flash backs. I mean look at your quest to get Sasuke back…"

He didn't finish, probably because I wouldn't have listened. In retrospect he was completely right, but I was thirteen. My age shouldn't absolve me of my stupidity but I've met enough teenagers to know that our head isn't exactly screwed on right at that age. I don't think we ever finished that conversation; it did get a bit hairy after we left the town. A couple missing-nin, a princess, and a stripper saw to that, but that's a story for another time.

I'd like to say the past couple days have been a blur, but they haven't. If Jiraiya were around he'd probably stab me, but I'm attributing the time travel to alien space bats. Seriously, when has my life had any semblance of internal logic anyways? I _woke up_ when the Naruto-that-used-to-be-hereafter-called-N found out he was the Kyuubi's container from Mizuki. I think I took over his body, and Kyuubi did her thing, and that was that.

It was a bit hazy after that. Iruka was gasping for air, muscles tensed and pupils dilated, adrenal glands had to be kicking into overdrive right about now. I let him be. Last time he pulled those giant shuriken out himself. I knew better this time thanks to Sakura. He should have left it to the med-nin but I was still only a pre-genin then. Now, well, now is, no, now was different.

Iruka was yelling at me to run with the scroll. Mizuki was eying me like a cat eyes an unsuspecting bird. And I was zen. I didn't run, and when Mizuki attacked, before I could even think my hands came together. I've done Kage Bunshin so many times I don't even think about it anymore. The chakra almost molds itself. By the time all the smoke dissipated from the clone creation, Mizuki had committed himself to a lazy punch. A normal genin would have been flattened by it. A few clones clothes-lined him and I let the rest have their fun. Usually I'd just have all the clones throw a couple hundred kunai, but they really are just parts of me, and I'd always loved pounding on enemies with my bare hands.

Iruka didn't go into shock this time, hadn't lost enough blood yet, but he couldn't comprehend what was happening. I conked him on the head before he could say something and waited for the ANBU to show up.

Sandaime and I spent the night by his hospital bed talking about the Kyuubi. Rather he talked and I acted shocked and sad and angry and on and on. I made my peace with the fox a long long time ago. We might even be friends now. I allow her to take control of me now and then and wipe out a couple hundred humans or so. Before we were sent back she found some sort of poetic justice in raiding pirate ships. She was cackling something awful about epic battles and pirates vs. ninjas the entire time.

He didn't think anything was up, and I pretty much just sat there and tried to plan the entire time. What exactly could I do while I was back? Even if it was a dream, it was _my _dream.

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**Author's Note**: I was hoping to get this little idea out of my head but it keeps bouncing around up there. This story came about from a conversation with a friend of mine doing her PhD in Pyschology, hoping to write her thesis on fanfiction of all things. If I write more of this story, which looks to be an almost sure bet now, watch the A/N for details. Her thoughts about fanfic are pretty interesting, and very sensible.

**Searing** is pushing 4.5k words now. I want to just post what I have but the chapter just doesn't seem complete with scenes left out. It might be a sign I need to revise it already.

Lastly, much love to Taivasalla who I have not thanked in any of my writings for being an excellent beta. Muchas gracias, domo arigato, gratias tibi ago.


	3. Ch2: Chasing — Crazy

Disclaimer: This is Kishimoto's sandbox. I'm just a toddler trying to build sand castles.

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**Chapter 2**

**Chasing —** **Crazy**

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The end of the Age of Ninjas is easily marked as, and readily agreed upon to be, the fall of the last two remaining shinobi superpowers, Kumo and Iwa. It is much harder to unarbritatrily mark a point at which the decline leading to the fall of the semi-mercantile system the Hidden Villages operated on, and directly therefore the Hidden Villages themselves, began. _

_Our examination begins not at Akatsuki's first overt movement, the invasion and destruction of Konoha, but in the decades of peace directly preceding it. Of great importance is the decline of Kaze no Kuni and Suna, in and of itself a complex set of events, but also a model example upon which to examine the fall of Konoha and Kiri._

_-Hata Hirofumi, Peacetime and the End of the Age of Ninjas—Nakano University Press 1342._

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Iruka really was the weepy emotional sort, the sort who made the perfect sympathetic mentor to a depressed kid. I've read the clinical description and I'm pretty sure that was me at 12 years old. Obnoxious shouts and shit-eating grins are almost always fake, and I'm not the one exception to the rule.

My life will always start with him, which is why I don't know how to deal with him. I think I've become pretty vanilla emotionally. I stopped loving like I loved Sakura, stopped hating like I hated Sasuke, stopped being happy like I was with friends. Above all, I stopped being open like I was with Iruka. I stopped making memories with people.

Maybe I was a bit too attached to what I had before my life went to shit, but it's easier to blame the formative years. Aside from three and a half years of living, I was always alone as a kid. People like me, emotionally stunted as kids, tend to become freaks as we get older; freaks usually don't play well with anyone but another freak.

_But_, I can't exactly be Iruka's little-brother-substitute either. I know too much—am too mature—and Iruka of all people would know something was wrong the moment we started talking. But suppose I cut Iruka out of my life, N's life to him, and then what? A depressed kid doesn't turn his back on the only thing going right for him.

Now Sandaime, I know he has a load of interesting things to teach, but I'm not sure how I'd pull it out of him. He might be a bit safer to talk to, we don't know each other so well, but I have the same problem with him as with Iruka. I can't just pick up wherever N had left off with them.

We had talked at Iruka's bedside for a bit, rather Sandaime talked at me and I started the slow process of sublimating where exactly I was, and quite possibly, the enormous opportunity granted to me. Iruka started monologuing sometime between Sandaime leaving and me getting lost in my mind.

I just kept nodding, a bit morosely it seems. He gave me his hitai-ate and all I could do was stare at it. I vaguely realized the significance of this event, but I just couldn't react, at all. The Mizuki-induced hormone rush was coming to an end and I was thinking as slow as molasses.

If you ask most people what they would change about their lives, I bet they could make a long list of past mistakes to not make and regrets left unfulfilled, but not on the spot. That kind of hindsight depends on intense introspection, usually because the core motif of the list depends on people making fundamental changes to their personal identity.

And I had a huge opportunity in my grasp, to make that list. Well, there was an _infinite_ number of opportunities besides the obvious ones—Orochimaru and Akatsuki and Sasuke; I just had to choose which ones to grab. Thank god for weekends, I guess. I had almost two whole days before the genin teams were assigned—so said Iruka.

Naturally, preoccupied as only someone in my position could be, I ran into a couple doors, knocked over a crash cart, and picked my fair share of glares on my way out. Those would take a little getting used to, and I wasn't going to be happy about it.

It was one of those sickeningly perfect Konoha days outside: middle of spring, cool but not cold, a certain crispness in the air set off by the sky's happy sun. And on top of all that, it was the Saturday bazaar, which meant brats underfoot, gossiping housewives, blustering fathers, and just _everyone_. I've come to enjoy solitude and the comfort of my inner monologue, and not having to watch where I walk.

My body moved on auto-pilot, my mind blanked, passively seeing and absorbing what was around me, but not recognizing and comprehending. I was drifting in a sea of distant familiarity. I may have bought something from the shops to my right, or stole something from the carts to my left, maybe run away from the ninjas in front of me; I wasn't sure. The memories are there in my head, somewhere.

I found myself outside the shithole apartment Konoha had rented out to me starting when I was five. The complex seemed to totter unstably, a remnant of the quick and corrupted construction Konoha had contracted after Kyuubi leveled most of it. The light bulbs in the stairwell still flickered and crackled, the pipes still leaked something awful—sewage—and I still had the top three floors to myself.

Apartment #713 was dusty, littered with dirty underwear and disposable ramen cups. N sure was a dirty little kid. In my thousands of years on the road, I'd picked up some particular affectations—reading was one—and my studio apartment simply wasn't going to cut it. Therefore it would be the first thing I'd take care of, or at least I'd clean it up first. Orochimaru and Akatsuki and Sasuke could hang themselves. Those problems weren't going to become unsolvable if I let them slide for a day, though they would be unsolvable if they weren't approached the right way.

A henge of a nondescript 30-something lady and a back flip that would have been ostentatious if someone had been there to see it left me at the entrance to the corner store. I didn't bother paying for anything, since the owners had made more than enough money off me, _and_ N, to deserve payment.

I'd left a clone in the apartment to start emptying out the fridge. We made short work of the cleaning supplies and trash bags, though I had underestimated how strong and how much the soaps needed to be. I don't think I'd ever cleaned the apartment before…

It was nice to have a clean place to come home to every night; one of the things I got used to when I'd take a couple years or a decade off from the road. I didn't make the same mistake when I ventured out after cleaning, shopping list firmly in hand this time, middle-aged henge looking fairly depressed at her sagging assets. _Unexpired _milk at the top of the list, more cleaning supplies, and quite possibly new clothes for a 12 year old boy; everything you'd expect of a lady shopping for a single parent household.

I'm not sure when I stopped buying orange clothes; probably during those magical years around eighteen and twenty five when most kids grow the fuck up. I also hadn't needed clothes screaming, "NOTICE ME," when I was on the run from sociopathic god-imitators. More of the mute colors like dark greens and grays and browns. Naturally, my hair was a problem too, so I'd dyed it black, though there _will not_ be any need for that.

And after the entire situation quieted down, and I had nowhere left to go, orange just wasn't as dominant in my wardrobe. I left it as the accent, like orange earrings, or an orange scarf, or an orange undershirt, but I still had no use for the color. It has a bad habit of bringing to the fore memories I'd rather not sift through in my endless days. As a freshly-minted genin, packing the proverbial heat of a lifetime in my head led to function over form at the gear-shop. More exploding tags than fancy double bladed kunai is a great example. The one concession to the all black and blue gear was orange under-mesh. Yes, it does come in orange.

My refrigerator was full when all the grocery bags were emptied—reusable bags yo, on the green bandwagon already—with only the choicest ingredients of course. My ramen was fairly simple, but I learned after a couple years that expensive gourmet ingredients really don't do as much for food as fresh and ripe ingredients do. Now Ichiraku would still get plenty of business from me; cravings compound at a ridiculous interest rate. Not as much business and time as N gives them though. I like spending time at home. I mean, it's _home_.

When I was N's age, the concept was hard to understand, since no place was really like home to me. I mean Konoha was nice and all, but Hokage wasn't my dream because I loved the place. What a joke that turned out to be anyways. But after actually having my own places, sometimes building my own places, I found out why people form that kind of attachment. Whenever I'd set out on the road again, my home would always keep a piece of me with it, and my next home wouldn't be the same as my last.

After the first few centuries, they might have looked and felt almost the same, but there were differences. Just as my houses grew into homes, I grew along with them. It was funny. When I was constantly walking, everything around me changed, but I was static. When I nested though, interacted with people, took the time to open my eyes; I grew.

Now the question is; _how _exactly do I let myself grow now? There's so much more I could become, but isn't it selfish to keep this chance strictly to myself? There's so much more Sasuke and Sakura could become. Sasuke could become strong enough to resist Orochimaru. Sakura could be a useful part of her genin team. They could be better, but entirely defined and directed by _my _choices and _my _desires. The problem is, I'm not omnipotent or omniscient or omnipresent, and I'm not psychotic like Pein. I'm not exactly the best choice to have this power. Can I really just play _God_? It's all for their own sake anyways…

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Author's Note**: Took a lot longer than I though. Not much to put here. **Searing** is being temperamental. It's hard to have to write in details to set up the plot later on without compromising the flow of an earlier chapter. Shout out to the lovely beta, **Taivasalla**, and San Diego weather. It's 75 deg F outside, slight breeze, and I'm in shorts and flip-flops. _Bliss_.


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